Amusement parks and other entertainment venues often include colorful displays to entertain and attract the patrons of the venues. For example, a colorful mural may enhance the look and feel of an amusement park ride, while a movie house may include several posters or advertisements hung on the wall of the lobby to announce the arrival of an upcoming feature. Such displays often include bright colors to attract the eye of the patrons. An additional technique often employed to attract the eye of a patron is the use of a luminous paint within the display to give off the effect of the display emitting light or glowing.
One common type of luminous effect of a mural or object involves the use of a fluorescent paint or color displayed under ultraviolet (UV) light, commonly known as black light. To provide a luminous effect, black light paint or ink may include tiny particulates included in the paint or ink that absorb the black light and re-emit visible light in response, providing a glowing effect to the black light paint. The particular color that the black light paint provides depends on the type of particulates that are mixed in with the paint. Thus, red-pigmented particulates give off a visible red light when seen under a black light. The glowing or luminous effect of black light paint provide an attraction and effect to a display that is not present by utilizing typical paints alone.
In many cases, however, black light paint often appears dull or “washed out” when viewed under white light as the particulates that provide the luminous effect to black light paint tend to obstruct or dull the brightness of the underlying color. Further, the combination black light paint and white light paint may alter the appearance of a painted object. Historically, this is typically not an issue because many displays are only viewed under the accurate conditions for the paint utilized, i.e. black light displays are typically only viewed by patrons under black light and white light displays are only viewed under white light. However, as the design of décor in entertainment venues advances, there may be instances where a particular portion of the display is viewed under both black light conditions and white light conditions. For example, a mural on a wall of an amusement park ride may include a portion that is viewed by the patrons as they transition from a white light environment to a black light environment. In this situation, some portions of the mural may be viewed by the patrons under both types of light. In another example, the ride car of an amusement park ride may transition from black light environments to white light environments several times throughout a ride. However, under white light the mural or ride car may appear dulled while under black light the mural may not glow as brilliantly as in true black light environments.
Further, the creation of an amusement park attraction may be costly and require several iterations of custom mixing of paint to achieve the desired look and feel of the attraction. For example, the application of paint to park attractions located remotely around the world often requires applicators attempt to mimic the look and feel of the attraction created by a design artist located many miles away. This may include mixing paint and other color schemes to try and match those created and selected by the design artist. However, such a process is often difficult and potentially requires several iterations of paint mixing and approval by the design artist, increasing the cost associated with the construction of the attraction. Further, such a process does not often lead to uniformity from park to park, but rather is dependent on the eye of the applicator, which can vary from person to person. Thus, what is needed is a color scheme that appears as a first known color under one light wavelength and a second known color under a second light wavelength such that a display takes on a desired color in multi-wavelength environments.